Thing 3

The VoiceThread presentation was interesting but I found that it did not fit my learning style very well. I found it almost agonizing at times to sit and listen. I would much rather read the information since I can read faster than most of the people were talking. In any event. . . here are my thoughts on the 7 1/2 Habits of LifeLong Learners.

The habit that is the hardest for me: View Problems as Challenges.
I tend to get discouraged when things go wrong, especially with my classroom technology. I always find a way to make things work but sometimes that means that the technology that was supposed to make my teaching easier ends up making thing much more difficult. I hope that in the next few years the technology available to my students in my classroom catches up with the rest of the world.

A funny story about a recent problem. . . I have a document camera in my classroom that I teach with almost exclusively. I rarely even write on the white board any more. I integrate streaming video (which I don't rick streaming but copy to a thumb drive before class) and also powerpoint presentations. Most of my teaching is done through the document camera. The week before Christmas break the document camera broke. Completely crapped out - wouldn't even turn on. My students came in and I was in the middle of writing their math answer key on a transpanency to put on my overhead projector. Many of them were calm and didn't pay much attention but a few freaked out saying, "What are you doing!? Isn't that a little old school for you? What happened to the camera? Are you actually going to use that?!" It was pretty funny actually. Made me staop to think for a minute that 10 years ago my first classroom had a chalkboard and there was one computer lab available for student use. Now all our classrooms have white boards, computers with projectors and there are three computer labs for sutdent use.

The habit that is the easiest for me: Create Your Own Learning Toolbox
I am the Queen of creating your own learning toolbox. I have many hobbies and each of the had their own toolbox. Most of my toolboxes for work come in the form of a 3-ring binder, with lots of tabs. I have one for each chapter in my textbook, for each supplemental unit that is not in my textbook, for my school contract and union information, for my flex-spending account. The list goes on and one. I have one for "The 23 Things" in fact. I have each the 11 big areas in its own tab. I am recording all the user names and passwords for all the new accounts I am opening up as I go so I will still be able to get to everything even after summer vaccation next year. I am also putting in that 23 Things toolbox copies of related articles and web site addresses that might be important in the future. Seems like I probably won't need the paper version of most of this since it will all be linked to my gmail account but I am one of those people who still keeps a paper gradebook in addition to our online gradebook. You just never know when the file server will be down you know. Paper, as archaic as it is, is still nice to hold on to and read every now and then.